Macroeconomic Context and Earnings Quality in Social Enterprises: Does Audit Quality Matter?

Damaris Ning Mufur and Hubert Tchakoute Tchuigoua

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: There is limited empirical evidence on the impact of audit quality on earnings quality in social enterprises, especially among microfinance institutions (MFIs). To address this research gap, we frame our analysis using agency theory and examine a sample of 5284 MFIs from 115 emerging countries between 2007 and 2014. We define earnings quality as the extent to which reported earnings are less affected by earnings management. Our findings suggest that Big 4 auditors enhance earnings quality in MFIs. However, we also observe that MFIs are more likely to misreport during economic downturns and that Big 4 auditors are less effective in curbing this discretionary behaviour under such conditions.

Keywords: audit quality; earnings management; external audit; non-profit auditing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in: International journal of auditing (2026) v.30 n° 3,p.506-527

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/413179/3/MUFUR.pdf Œuvre complète ou partie de l'œuvre (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/413179

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/413179

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().